I love President Bush, and his speechwriters.
In a speech delivered before a vast throng of fellow Americans spilling away from the steps of the Capitol, Bush said he would place the nation on the side of the world's oppressed people. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppress, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." ...In the first words of his new term, Bush said that advancing freedom and liberty were the oldest ideals of America. "Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time," he said in a reference to the war against terrorism.
Bush offered an implied rebuttal to critics of his foreign policy and the war in Iraq. "Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty," he said, "though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt."
Here's the full transcript of President Bush's inaugural address. The parts that made the cry:
We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. ...
We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.
When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.
May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America.
If that doesn't give you hope for the future and bring tears to your eyes then you have a hardened, tiny soul.
Good speech, but I wonder if your admiration of it is dependent upon the person giving it.
In other words, if John Kerry were giving that exact same speech.. all things being equal.. would you still feel the same about it?
We can't just transfer the speech from Bush to Kerry without taking some things into consideration. Kerry would never give a speech like this one. It doesn't even mention Vietnam once.
On the contrary... Presidential inaugurals.. especially 2nd-term inaugurals.. are always well-written.
I'm simply asking if you'd like the speech if someone other than Bush gave it. Bush's public speaking skills are not impressive to me, so my appreciation for the speech is because of the speech... not who gave it.
Yes, Bush isn't particularly eloquent. Leaving my bias and sarcasm aside, I think it was a fabulous speech that would have done well with either candidate.
I liked the speech itself. I also liked the benediction. I thought both were quite inspiring.
Hi Mike! Long time no talk.
I have a few questions about Bush's speech:
I'm not sure who this "some" he's referring to is, but the obvious implication is that people who were against the war in Iraq are against "liberty" in some sort of general, ill-defined way.
Defined by whom, exactly? And by what metric is he measuring the advance of freedom? Is that even quantifiable in any meaningful way? And isn't this whole statement an incredible over-simplification of the issues involved in global politics?
How precisely is tyranny in other lands going to cause tyranny here? And how exactly is it appropriate to force our brand of colonial democracy on citizens of other countries? How exactly do you force people into self-government?
The U.S. gained its liberty through a civil revolution of its people. It was not imposed by a foreign government.
What a rude thing to say. Isn't he aware that not everyone in this country is an evangelical Christian?
Mark: I would have been underwhelmed if John Kerry had given the same speech because I would have known that every word was a lie. So it goes. The speaker is important because he has credibility.
Matt: Hey! How's it going? I was just thinking about you the other day and the map you made of the steam tunnels. Do a search on the site for "UCLA tunnels" and you'll find it and some other links that may interest you as well.
As for the speech, it's obviously written from an "average American" perspective, using our conventional meanings for liberty and that sort of thing. We most certainly did force Japan and Germany into self-government, though it took almost a decade for their democracies to take root after the end of WW2. I hope that Iraq and Afghanistan work the same way, but we won't know if we're successful for a while. I think it's a worthwhile endeavor, though.
If someone is a slave and happy in their condition, does that mean we shouldn't try to free them? I don't think so, because we're not only freeing them, we're freeing their children as well, who have no choice in the matter. They can always decide to elect another tyrant if they want to, but I doubt they will. If they do, then so be it, that's fine, as long as he doesn't endanger us.
MW: No, you would have BELIEVED it was lies if Kerry gave that speech. What you believe and the truth are not necessarily the same.
Yeah, I remember that map... I've heard they've locked it down a bit in recent years (they definitely replaced that hidden door on the outside of Moore Hall which always let us in).
To the topic:
To me it looks more like it's written from the "average American who voted for Bush" perspective. Which isn't exactly an unexpected tack for Bush to take, but it's irrational to imply that it represents some kind of overall or average view.
Japan's government ordered their military to attack one of our military bases. Germany invaded and conquered several of our allies, who then asked for our help. Iraq did neither of these things; the situations are not comparable.
And wasn't Germany already a democracy during the entire length of Hitler's reign?
Iraq and Afghanistan are entirely different situations. Afghanistan was (as far as I know) harboring people who had actually attacked us, and although invading it might have been justified, the handling of the invasion (and the lack of follow-up) have been horribly botched.
Iraq, on the other hand, wasn't a threat to us, had no WMDs, wasn't harboring Al Qaeda or any other terrorists... oh, so the government's behavior didn't meet our standard of freedom? There are far more oppressive governments (with smaller armies -- easier to conquer!) in the world. Why haven't we invaded them?
If you're absolutely certain that they're a slave, AND that they're unhappy, AND they've asked for help, then yeah, I'd say you'd be justified in trying to free them. The plight of African slaves in the post-revolutionary U.S. does not remotely compare to the situation of pre-2003 Iraqi civilians.
And even if freedom is a moral imperative, then what of losing the trust and love of millions of people worldwide, potentially botching the job and causing far worse grief and suffering than what Saddam's subjects endured, and spending thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars that would have been better spent elsewhere?
If we're going to use analogies, then imagine that in trying to free that slave, there's a chance you'll get his entire family killed, burn down the plantation where he lived, and cost the lives of one, two, or ten of your own men? Is it still a good idea?
The mere fact that more people will exist in the future in the same conditions doesn't magnify the justifiability of the deed. Those children are as likely to end up living in a nation of perpetual terrorism and warfare because of our invasion, as they are to wind up living in a nation of peace and love and freedom.
What are you basing that on? Not every culture has the same attitude toward individuality, personal freedom versus collective necessity, and style of government that Americans do, despite assertions that everyone, everywhere, craves an identical brand of shining-sky freedom.
Saddam wasn't endangering us, so why would it be okay for that future tyrant to exist, but it wasn't okay for Saddam?
There were some parts of the speech I found moving, but they were the parts that I thought actually served to indict the conduct of the Bush administration, rather than defend it. I've noticed this in the past, in Bush's State of the Union addresses, typically: he'll make some noble-sounding argument that, when you actually get down to the specifics of his own behavior as leader, he's actually in blatant violation of himself.
George Bush: The master of unintended irony.
Matt: Well, average can mean "median", in which case the median American is certainly a Bush voter.
I didn't say our motivations for war were the same in WW2 and in Iraq, but we accomplished similar things and will similarly force them into democracy.
You gave an analogy of us freeing one person at the cost of "one, two, ten" of our own men, and burning down plantations and such, but that ratio is way out of wack with reality. Sure it would be bad to free one person and kill 10. But we freed 50,000,000 between Iraq and Afghanistan, and killed mere thousands at most, and lost only a couple thousand of our own people, who were volunteers.
Saddam was endangering us, he was shooting at our planes every week in the no fly zones. Those shots alone were acts of war, or should we have eliminated the no fly zones and allowed him to massacre the northern Kurds? Plus, the whole region is a danger to us, and we need to fix the whole place. As I've said, and others, Iraq is just the lynchpin to the region.
JC: Like which parts?
MW: "Iraq is just the lynchpin to the region."
That's far from certain.
If 49 people are against something, and 51 people are for it, then the "median" member of that group is for it. This is true. But it's not meaningfully useful to say that the average American supports Bush -- even if you mean the median American -- except as propagandistic rhetoric. So the median American voted for Bush. So what? Does that prove anything? Does it support anything? No.
What similar things did we accomplish, precisely? And you grant that our motivations for invading each country were different, which is obviously true. Will you also grant that the situations in those countries both before and after the invasions are not comparable? Or do you think they really are?
"Freed 50,000,000." What does that mean, exactly? Has quality of life improved for all of those people? (No.) Most of them? (No.) Increased on average -- mean, median, mode, or otherwise? (No.) What exactly have we freed them from? So far they've traded centralized tyranny for both distributed chaos and the self-righteous, well-intentioned tyranny of a foreign government. Your assertion is that they WILL be better off in the future, but so far no evidence has been given to support that notion. I'm not completely familiar with the history, but I'm fairly certain that the period after Allied occupation of Japan and Germany was not marked with several-times-daily terrorist attacks in the conquered nations.
Those "no-fly" zones were over Iraqi territory. Regardless of your past actions, shooting at enemy planes that are flying over your own airspace is not an "act of war" by any sane definition of the term. The whole region is only a danger to us because we spend so much time and energy interfering with local politics, in case you've forgotten about the billions of dollars in aid and weapons we've given to Israel over the years, and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and numerous other countries in the region. Some of the locals are pretty pissed about this kind of stuff. Of course, we spend time interfering there because we have interests there -- primarily oil, and also in our alliance with Israel. We don't get to pretend that we're innocent bystanders.
You're also implying that we had a moral imperative to protect the Kurds from Saddam. Why? We were happy to give him weapons and money in the '80s so that he could fight Iran, and chose to ignore that he was gassing Kurds with those weapons as well. Has the U.S. admitted that that was a mistake? No.
As Mark points out, the idea that Iraq is somehow a lynchpin to the region is "far from certain." Exactly what evidence can be provided to show that Iraq is somehow a lynchpin, cornerstone, or otherwise the single most important country in the region as far as stability (and oil production) are concerned?
"...and lost only a couple thousand of our own people, who were volunteers."
Just because they are being paid to be in the military doesn't mean that their lives are expendable.
"Only" a couple thousand??
That's sickening. They are OUR soldiers. They deserve more respect than that. They want a purpose, a direction in the tasks handed to them. They did not sign up to become cannon fodder in a country that finds their presence overbearing, disrespectful, demeaning.
Why couldn't Rumsfeld just sign the letters himself? Offer himself sincerely to a simple task that is far easier than the ones he's put to our guys? Perhaps it is to retain the gleeful detachment to these losses you seem to share.
Only a couple thousand. Who are you trying to fool? Have you lost anybody in the war? Have you then wondered what exactly they were doing when they were killed, what got them killed? Then multiply that befuddlement and outrage by a thousand.
Call it emotion. The question remains: What has our military accomplished? Well, let's see. They are rebuilding. They are in the process of rebuilding a massive infrastructure that they had to destroy first. They are trying vigilantly to hold elections in a week. But they can't seem to win the trust or the love, only the fear, of a people a fifth of whom's disenfranchisement is a conundrum we can't seem to solve either.
It's not for lack of effort on the soldiers' part. It's just for lack of knowledge, purpose, and direction on the part of those who put them in their current situation.
Mark: If you want certainty, become a mathematician.
Matt: That the average American supports Bush is important because you just wrote about Bush's speech that "it's irrational to imply that it represents some kind of overall or average view". It's clearly rational to imply such a thing.
As for the quality of life and so forth in Iraq, I highly recommend the movie Voices of Iraq, in which hundreds of Iraqis explain just how much better their lot is now than a few years ago.
The "no fly" zones were agreed to by Saddam as a condition of the cease fire. C'mon. They were the result of the first Gulf War, and even supported by UN resolutions. Violating them was definitely an act of war that alone justified the resumption of hostilities.
Our alliance with Israel is a result of our common interests in the world. Dealing with Saddam and other dictators wasn't a "mistake" in the past, it was a purposeful choice based on what was thought to be best at the time. It was an arguably important way to fight communists, who were financing Iran, as I'm sure you know. We fought proxy wars with the USSR for decades all order the world. Was it good policy? I don't know, maybe not, but eventually it all changed when Reagan initiated the arms build up that ultimately brought down the Soviets. Times change, strategies change, and those who we worked with in the past don't become our permanent allies, nor does anyone become our permanent enemy. As Bush said Thursday.
As for Iraq being the "lynchpin" for stability or oil production, neither of those two things are the point. We don't want stability there, we want to overthrow most of the governments and install democracies, ultimately. Hopefully that won't require military force in every instance, and I don't think it will. Iraq is the lynchpin for democracy because they have the nearest history of actual elections, they have an educated older class, a broad array of expatriates, a central location, &c.
michelle: Yes of course they're our soldiers. I don't think I could make it any clearer on this blog how much I appreciate the sacrifice of our troops. Don't be so disingenuous as to pretend otherwise.
The reason the Sunnis won't vote is because of their own choices, they aren't being disenfranchised by anyone. They're, generally, in rebellion. The South didn't vote in the 1864 election for similar reasons.
MW: It's not that I demand certainty... it's just that Iraq being the lynchpin for democracy in the Middle East does not come anywhere near to being certain. It's not even very likely, at this point.
It's rational in the sense that it's literally true, given proper definitions (e.g. that average means "median"; the concept of a "mean" voter is, pardon the pun, meaningless). But it's misleading; when looking at the statistics of something like an election, you have to examine the distribution to glean anything important about the nature of the voters. Numerical averages about all voters don't impart any really useful information about the election. The fact that "the median voter voted for Bush" can't be used to support any further assertions, aside from trivially obvious things like "Bush won" or "more Republicans voted than Democrats". What it is used for anyway is to support ideas like, "Therefore, we should all support Bush," or "Democrats are crazy." (No, I'm not accusing you of saying those things.)
In other words, I guess I'm asking you, "So, the median voter voted for Bush. And therefore...?"
I don't suppose any of those Iraqis are civilians killed by American bombing or gunfire? No? Just checking. And I seriously don't believe that you just quoted a movie -- which I'm sure has no bias -- as support for an argument that the average (mean, median, or mode) quality of life has gone up. I doubt you'd disagree that I could find an equal number of Iraqis talking about how things are now worse than they were before the invasion. And neither case would prove anything. Once again, we need a hard statistical distribution to analyze. Anecdotal evidence is worth little.
Then how come the administration never invoked them as justification for the invasion? It was all WMDs and (to a much lesser extent, back before the invasion) terrorism. Later on, after weeks had passed without any WMDs being found, the administration switched to the freedom angle.
The general principle seems to be that we do these things (meddle with other countries' affairs) because they meet up with our interests. That's entirely understandable; every actor (in an economic sense) should act in ways that correspond with improving their personal gain. I guess my point is that I disagree with those who see "installing democracies in foreign countries" as something that indirectly improves our personal standing. It may, to some degree, but there are other costs that are much higher -- such as letting the entire world know that we're going to throw our weight and do what we think is best, no matter what anyone says. To me, that doesn't seem like such a hot idea.
More specifically, if this is our goal, then how come this has never been laid out in full by the administration? Since we're so powerful and have nothing to fear, why can't we be up front about our general goals? "We want all countries to be democracies, because non-democracies threaten our way of life." Actually, wait, I guess that's more or less what Bush said in his speech. Too bad he couldn't have said that back before we invaded Iraq.
Uh... why? I'm having trouble thinking of any specific interests we have in the region aside from 1) we want it stable so that the people don't attack us, and 2) so that we have stable access to the oil supplies there. WHY do we want to overthrow those governments? Did I nail it above with the "we want all nations to be democracies" thing?
If this is true, then wouldn't Bush have defused a lot of criticism about the justification for the war if he had just said in advance that our goal was to turn the whole world into friendly democracies? Why the WMD and "Iraq is a direct military threat to us RIGHT NOW" and "Terrorist, terrorists, terrorists" angles?
I can probably agree that the world will be a better place (by some non-zero amount) if every nation is a stable democracy. I just don't agree that the way to get there is throwing our weight around, whether it's by unilateral military action or the threat thereof.